How to set the user's Default joboptions directory?

KBrown,

At this time we do not use Active Directory domains as our primary authentication mechanism.

My recommendation is to stay away from personal JobOptions as much as possible. Vast amounts of pain and suffering can be alleviated by doing this.

What I might suggest investigating how we came up as a solution. That being, to do away with user settings where ever possible and stick with Global ones.

The default folder where JobOptions are stored is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Distiller\AdobePDFSettings\(default)
Type: REG_SZ
Value: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe PDF\Settings\

Caveats:
The above is stored in HKCU - so you need to find a mechanism to update all users on a workstation.
The ...\Settings\ folder is locked from update by Adobe Systems during product installation. Why they did this and instead of just locking the files as read-only is beyond me. This concern has been mentioned to Acrobat engineering with no results. So, you will need to unlock that to allow folks to save off their settings.

The benefit to doing this are:
Updated job options can be replicated to a known location on all workstations without having to update each person's login info.
People on the same workstation can use the same joboptions - reducing version control.

You can take this one step further and point the setting files location out in a network space for the same reasons. However, if the network is down, Distiller is as well.

* Please note, I am, in no way, implying how we (Hewitt) have done anything is the correct, right or best way. It is just one of all possibly ways and one in which we have found to work reliably.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

-Doug

Thanks for the reply - it caused me to conduct a more specific search of the registry. I believe I've come up with a working solution.

[b]Acrobat Distiller - How to set the user's Default joboptions directory.[/b]

User-created Adobe Distiller Joboptions files are stored in the directory specified in the key;

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\PDF Settings
TYPE: REG_SZ

It appears that this value is set upon the initial installation of Adobe Acrobat. In our case we installed Acrobat on our XP Pro systems before we had a Windows Domain. Hence for the above mentioned key;

VALUE: C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe PDF\Settings\where is the name of the LOCAL Windows user.We installed a Windows Domain and we converted our local XP accounts to Windows Domain accounts by a method (rightly or wrongly) that resulting in the user’s Documents and Settings directory changing from;

C:\Documents and Settings\to;

C:\Documents and Settings\where DOMAINNAME is, of course, our Windows Domain Name.

We disabled, but did not delete, the LOCAL account to force use of the DOMAIN account. This meant that data was preserved in the LOCAL Windows user’s Documents and Settings directory and duplicated in the Documents and Settings directory of the DOMAIN user. Therefore when the user first logged into the DOMAIN all user customizations appeared unchanged. We figured the “old” Documents and Settings directory would not be used again. Wrong!

When we started to use Joboption files we discovered Jobotion files created by Distiller were not saved under the Documents and Settings directory for the DOMAIN user but under the “old” LOCAL user’s directory. It appears the above mentioned key was not altered by the process we followed to convert LOCAL account to DOMAIN accounts and Distiller continued to look for user’s Joboptions files in the “old” location. In hindsight it makes sense that a number of registry keys remained unaltered, such as the key above.

To force Adobe Distiller to look in the DOMAIN user’s Documents and Settings the value of the above mentioned key was changed to;

C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe PDF\Settings\This implies we could alter the key to point to a network location (eg: Windows Share) in order to have a common collection of Joboptions files available for all users – with administrative control over these files. I say implies because we’ve not tested that.

Perhaps the above will assist others?

Here's why we are using Joboptions in the first place - so we can set the view property of our PDF's.

[url]http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/lkassuba/setting-initial-view-property-your-pdfs[/url]